ori investigations – Retraction Watch

Court tosses out researcher’s bid to overturn funding ban

A federal court has terminated a former researcher’s lawsuit against the U.S. government agency that barred her from receiving federal funds following an agency investigation that lasted 10 years.

Ivana Frech — formerly Ivana De Domenico — sued the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in 2023 after the agency concluded she engaged in research misconduct while at the University of Utah, by “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating” images in work funded by the National Institutes of Health. In her legal complaint filed shortly after ORI’s debarment, Frech alleged the agency’s misconduct findings and debarment decision were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, unsupported by substantial evidence, and contrary to law and regulation.”

On December 12, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia threw out Frech’s suit, ruling in favor of the government’s motion for summary judgement. Summary motions are granted when a court finds no genuine dispute over material facts and a lack of conflicting evidence for a jury to weigh. The decision allows ORI’s three-year debarment – which runs through August 2026 – and misconduct conclusions against Frech to stand.

ORI has released just two misconduct findings this year

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has been relatively quiet in 2025, releasing just two misconduct findings with only two weeks remaining in the year — the fewest the office has released since at least 2006. ORI typically releases an average of about 10 findings a year.

The office, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, oversees research integrity and misconduct for the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other HHS agencies. Its team of scientist-investigators review institutional inquiries and investigate possible research misconduct for a portfolio of publicly funded biomedical research that totals tens of billions of dollars.

In response to questions on whether the office expects to release more rulings this year, an HHS spokesperson told us the office can’t comment on open cases or anticipated findings. “ORI’s Division of Investigative Oversight continues to carry out its oversight responsibilities, and staff actively engage in process improvements to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of responding to research misconduct allegations,” the spokesperson said.

Former lab tech earns federal funding ban years after leaving science

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has barred a former lab technician at Washington State University from participating in federally funded research for three years after finding he had committed misconduct.

The case dates back more than five years. Ryan Evanoff was a scientific assistant in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology at the university’s Pullman campus. As we reported in 2020, colleagues in the department had discovered he had been fabricating gene sequence data. The falsified data led to the retraction of two papers.

A draft of the university’s investigation obtained through a public records request stated Evanoff engaged in “a repeated and measurable pattern of research material manipulation, changing of data, omission of critical research procedures and findings in lab notebooks, and making up data and results” from at least 2015 through 2019, when he left the university.

Kidney researcher debarred from federal U.S. funding for image manipulation

A former Baylor College of Medicine researcher has been debarred from federal funding for two years after a review by the Office of Research Integrity found evidence of misconduct.

Liping Zhang, a former assistant professor in the school’s nephrology section, “engaged in research misconduct in research supported by U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) funds,” according to a notice scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on March 19.

ORI based its findings on a Baylor College of Medicine investigation as well as evidence gathered during its oversight review, the notice states. It continues:

Exclusive: U.S. federal research integrity teams take hits with departures

Amid efforts by the Trump administration to “put an end to fraudulent and wasteful spending” and “enhance” accountability, two key offices charged with investigating fraud and holding scientists and institutions accountable for federal spending have seen top leadership depart.

At the National Science Foundation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), the changes start at the top: Inspector General Allison Lerner is departing, and Megan Wallace, currently assistant inspector general for investigations at NSF, will become the acting inspector general, effective March 1.

Deputy Inspector General Ken Chason is also departing. The acting deputy will be Catherine DelPrete, who is NSF’s general counsel to NSF’s inspector general, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The changes were confirmed by Nadine Lymn, communications director of the National Science Board, which appoints and supervises NSF’s inspector general.

Meanwhile, Retraction Watch has learned that most — if not all — research investigators at the National Science Foundation’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) will also be leaving their jobs.

Former Columbia University psychiatrist committed research misconduct, says federal watchdog

A psychiatry researcher who received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this year committed research misconduct, another federal watchdog found.

Bret Rutherford, formerly a research psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, “engaged in research misconduct by recklessly falsely reporting that all human research subjects met the inclusion/exclusion criteria for late-life depression studies,” according to a case summary from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) published today.

As The Transmitter previously reported, a suicide that occurred during one of Rutherford’s trials in 2021 was followed by a suspension of his research a few months later. The U.S. Office of Human Research Protections subsequently halted all federally funded research involving human participants at the institute in June 2023 and launched a review of its research practices.

Exclusive: One university’s three-year battle to retract papers with fake data

In 2021, the provost of the University of Maryland, Baltimore sounded the alarm about a troubling batch of papers from the lab of Richard Eckert, the former chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the institution.

The provost sent letters to the editors of seven journals calling out a string of serious issues. Based on the university’s investigation, the papers contained duplicated, fabricated and falsified data, according to emails obtained by Retraction Watch.

But more than three years later, the results of those alerts are mixed: Of the 11 papers the university flagged in 2021, editors corrected three and retracted two. Six still await resolution, with no apparent action taken by the journals.

Former Harvard cancer researcher plagiarized data, federal watchdog says

A former research fellow at Harvard Medical School faked data and used images from another scientist without attribution in a published paper and two grant applications, according to findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

The researcher, Arunoday K. Bhan, was also a former staff scientist at City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, Calif., and first author on “Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived platelets loaded with lapatinib effectively target HER2+ breast cancer metastasis to the brain,” which appeared in Scientific Reports in October 2021. The article has been cited eight times.

The paper was retracted in March. The retraction note cited an investigation by City of Hope and detailed “discrepancies in the data” that match ORI’s findings.

Former Maryland dept. chair with $19 million in grants faked data in 13 papers, feds say

A former department chair engaged in research misconduct in work funded by 19 grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

Richard Eckert, formerly the chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and deputy director of the university’s Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, faked data in 13 published papers and two grant applications, ORI found.

The ORI finding stated Eckert “engaged in research misconduct in research supported by” every NIH grant on which he served as principal investigator, totaling more than $19 million. The finding also lists multiple “Center Core Grants” worth hundreds of millions for shared resources and facilities at research centers.

Pharmaceutical researcher faked data in two papers, says federal watchdog

A former professor and vice provost for research at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in New York, falsified data in two published papers, according to findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Shaker Mousa, who was also chairman and executive vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research Institute at Albany, already has at least 10 retractions and two corrections, by our count.

The falsified data appeared in “Tetraiodothyroacetic acid-conjugated PLGA nanoparticles: a nanomedicine approach to treat drug-resistant breast cancer,” which appeared in Nanomedicine in 2013, and “The proangiogenic action of thyroid hormone analogue GC-1 is initiated at an integrin,” which appeared in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology in 2005 and was retracted last September. ORI called for Mousa to request a correction or retraction of the Nanomedicine paper as well.

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